The Edge Online - Reviews: Michael Moorcock: The War Amongst the Angels

The War Amongst the Angels
Michael Moorcock
Orion hardback, 249 pages, £16.99
Published September 1996
ISBN 1857984102
Orion trade paperback, 249 pages, £9.99
Published September 1996
ISBN 1857984110
Orion paperback, 301 pages, £6.99
Published August 1997
ISBN 0752810790
Review by David Kendall (1996)

What is it with Angels? They seem to be everywhere at the moment. Millennium psychosis? Messengers from hyperspace? Eternal archetypes? Anyone familiar with Moorcock’s vast output won’t be surprised at me plugging for the latter.

War Amongst the Angels is the conclusion of the Southern Mystic trilogy which began with Blood and Fabulous Harbours. The narrative belongs mainly to the Rose, though every so often it skates into Jack Karaquazian, the lovelorn gambler. There is no indication of character shift, so you can be halfway down a page before you realise you’re seeing through someone else’s eyes. It’s a device that fits well with Moorcock’s theories of the multiverse, where the eternals are reflected to a greater or lesser extent throughout the many incarnations of possibility. Though the Rose is a female character there is no attempt to engender her with any recognisably ‘female’ traits. Karaquazian is more recognisably male but there is a genderless quality to the whole narrative; characters are identified by the strengths and weaknesses of their personalities, or their contrasting views of the world. Even amongst the eternals there is no one consolidated vision, such things are for the Singularity which loves rules the way the eternals ‘love options’. As Jack Karaquazian tells it: ‘people of my background were trained not to speculate on such lines. We were taught that society is in a permanent state of flux. People look back to golden ages that were equally unstable, but had for a while a reassuring appearance of certainty. It is, of course, immediately clear to us that they no longer exist. Therefore, their certainties were unfounded.’

Moorcock’s work has always been deeply interwoven with myth, and now he’s written so much he can interact with his own output, poking fun at himself, but also destabilising any sense of narrative the reader might find: the Rose’s
poor cousin Michael . . . still in London, struggling to establish himself as a boy’s story writer and determined to return to Texas in triumph.

Pulp fictions are used alongside older folk heroes. We’re given an eternal Dick Turpin cheerfully riding to his hanging at York every so often to keep the myth alive, and to serve his purpose in the greater scheme of the multiverse. Even when reality is used, it’s slightly disjointed, askew from the reality we know. Its very insertion throws new light on the fiction. Turpin and his friends hold up London trams amidst the eighties battle over public ownership of the London transport system:
The popular thief is as dependent on his public as the actor or the novelist. His fate, in the end, is entirely in their hands. He is in this respect, an altogether nobler creature than the politician, who is never so accountable. - Dick Turpin.

Anyone who’s read a few Moorcock books can play ‘spot the Elric figure’, who slowly comes into full manifestation as the Angelic war reaches its climax. I found myself following the appearance of familiar characters, mythic figures, watching them pulse in and out of existence more than trying to make any linear sense of the story. ‘Law imposes her rule while Chaos is content to explore.’

In this novel the city/utopia is Las Cascadas, a former pirate enclave, home to a multitude of creeds and races. The band of adventurers, half Moorcock’s creations, half popular figures such as Turpin and Buffalo Bill journey in search of the Grail, the ultimate symbol of the west. The Angels are glimpsed first as native Americans until they reach their Pre-Raphaelite glory in the final battle between Law and Chaos, where the renegade Quelch attempts to overturn things in his favour. It’s a battle where ‘survival would be wholly dependent upon the ability to invent telling metaphor.’ A fight to ‘define realities’ and the best weapon is ‘human desire.’ Even the ending has echoes within earlier Moorcock novels (the ‘final’ Elric novel) but this familiarity adds to rather than detracts from the conclusion.

I found Blood hard going, its theory too separate from the story, too much time spent in the pulp world of Billy-Bob Begg and Co. War is brewed to perfection. Moorcock is at his best; complex, fluid, reality exploding. As the Rose notes: ‘There are times when only twentieth century romantics will do.’ Quite true.

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